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Everything You Need to Know About HBO's 'The Case Against Adnan Syed'

The documentary is sure to reignite debate around the now-famous podcast.

Mar 7, 2019

HBO

The new HBO docuseries The Case Against Adnan Syed premieres this Sunday, promising to shed some light on one of the most infamous true-crime stories of the 21st century. It’s a tale that’s already formed the basis of the mega-hit podcast Serial—which in turn spawned a veritable boom of similarly themed shows—and become something of an obsession for Internet sleuths, and the new show will surely only reignite that still-raging debate. Here’s a quick primer on everything you need to know going in.

What is The Case Against Adnan Syed?

The new four-part documentary series delves into the murder of 18-year-old high-school student Hae Min Lee, whose body was found strangled and partially buried in a Baltimore park in 1999. The man accused of killing her—Lee’s ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed—is currently serving a life sentence in prison while still maintaining his innocence, and he’s currently awaiting decision on whether he’ll be allowed a new trial sometime this year. The very possibility of a new day in court arose after the story became the subject of the acclaimed, massively popular podcast Serial, where investigator Sarah Koenig teased out the many dangling threads of the cold case for a rapt listening audience of millions. The potentially mishandled police investigation and the botched job of Syed’s attorneys that Serial uncovered created a lingering mystery, which the show’s many amateur detective fans have been trying to solve ever since.

When and where does it air?

The first episode of The Case Against Adnan Syed premieres on HBO on Sunday, March 10 at 8 p.m. CT, with the next three installments airing across Sundays thereafter. It will also be made available on HBO Go and HBO Now.

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Who’s behind it?

Director Amy Berg spent the past three-years-and-change working on the series, the latest in a line of documentaries she’s tackled on exceedingly difficult subjects. Berg was nominated for an Academy Award for her 2006 film Deliver Us From Evil, which looked at charges of sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. Her other documentary credits include the Peter Jackson-produced West Of Memphis, about the accused teenage murderers of the West Memphis Three, and An Open Secret, looking at allegations of child sex abuse in Hollywood.

So what is the case against Adnan Syed?

Although the docuseries’ title suggests that it will present damning evidence of Syed’s guilt, Serial listeners—or anyone who’s come across the many headlines about the case over the years—should know that it’s probably not so cut and dry. With a total lack of physical evidence, Syed’s conviction largely hinged on two things: some unreliably applied interpretation of Syed’s cellphone data on the day of Lee’s disappearance, and the sketchy testimony of Syed’s friend, Jay, who claims that he helped Syed bury the body.

Meanwhile, Syed’s defense team failed to interview potential alibis for Syed, never permitted him to testify in court, and allowed most of the dubious evidence against him to be submitted unchallenged. As Serial explored, things only get more confusing from there, muddled by the tangles of teenage love and, his advocates argue, an implicit bias toward Syed as a Muslim. It is, for lack of a better term, a real mess.

Do I need to have listened to Serial to understand it?

No. While the series will certainly appeal to those who are already thoroughly engrossed in the mystery, The Case Against Adnan Syed offers its own comprehensive look, building off of Koenig’s investigation—and Berg’s dissatisfaction with how it remained unresolved—to present a new point of view.

I’ve already listened to Serial. How does it complement the podcast?

You can see it, for one thing. Putting faces to the names, both in recent interviews and archival footage, should go a long way toward clearing up some of the confusion that comes with so many competing voices, all vying to tell their versions. And the most important of these voices is Lee’s: Through diary entries (read aloud over animated segments by Icelandic artist Sara Gunnarsdóttir), the show will bring Lee back into a story that she was largely left out of, other than as a victim. (Syed, unfortunately was not allowed to be on camera; as in Serial, he appears only via phone interviews.) There’s also the fact that The Case Against Adnan Syed picks up in the present day, covering the release of Serial and the widespread impact it had, including on Syed’s currently pending appeal.

Will this finally solve the case?

Reviewers were only granted access to the first three episodes, and in interviews, Berg has been cagy about revealing “the end”—so yes, it’s possible that The Case Against Adnan Syed contains some sort of bombshell in its final hour. However, given that Serial already spent 12 hours trying to untangle it all, followed by the countless thousands of hours of Reddit sleuthing since then… eh, probably not. What you can expect is a slightly clearer picture of one of America’s murkiest murder-mysteries, along with a heightened understanding of what it is about this case, specifically, that remains so captivating and confounding, 20 years later.

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